Distance
by bandgrad2008
Summary: In the end, Carly was never alone. And neither am I.


**Disclaimer: I don't own.**

**A/N: Well, this was depressing. I don't even know where this came from. I guess I just got bored waiting for Spanish to start...so I'm posting this before class...which I need to get to right now. Plus my laptop battery's dying. Damn it.**

**Anyway, dark, kinda...different. Enjoy. And if you cry...so did I.**

No one expected it, I'm sure. There wasn't much to expect, or at least not much to expect to go wrong. But it did. Everything changed, and it was all her fault. In some sick and twisted way, she had gone from the top of the world into the depths of the core, taking everything down with her. Everyone who knew her was shocked, surprised, some even in denial that this could happen to her…or to anyone.

She wasn't in it alone. Four other people went down with her, destroying every molecule of self-respect we had. But we did it for her, not for ourselves, and God only knew that if we hadn't, we would have lost her forever. There was nothing else we could have done, nothing that would have saved her, and if we had? Things might have resulted much more positively. There might have been less problem, we could have helped her, brought her back to us.

But she was so far gone there was no help for her. And I know…I stood by her for the three years of suffering, of pure torture that she didn't even realize she was causing. She wasn't being selfish and she wasn't doing _anything_ on purpose. But I knew what she was doing…and I didn't stop her.

It could have been me. It could have been our friends, her brother, my sister, or anyone else we knew. But it wasn't. And as afraid of what was happening as we might have been, we didn't stop her. We couldn't stop her. Not only would they have taken her away from us, they would have taken all of us, torn us apart, _interrogated_ us because we were nothing more to them than accessories. How do you stop someone from doing something they don't even know they're doing? Were we supposed to ask for help? We couldn't. No one would have believed us. No one would have believed the truth about her, that she isn't just some…criminal.

She isn't.

Anyone in the world could ask us why we don't help her, why we don't force her to see someone, to figure out why she's the way she is. That's the thing. We know why she is the way she is, why she does what she does, and that, yes, she can be helped. Why don't we? That's been the question all along, hasn't it? If we helped her…We would lose her. They would find out about what she's done and they would prosecute her, treat her like nothing more than an animal, and we couldn't let that happen. She doesn't know what she's doing.

It never made sense to other people, after we had graduated, when this had happened to her. She wasn't always like this. She was ambitious, studious…but after we graduated, things changed. We lived on our own, ready for college, when it happened. I learned a lot more about her than I ever could know. Those nights that I didn't stay at her apartment when we were kids or in high school, those days where she would go to school and I would always note when she was off, when something was wrong with her…I tried to tell her to talk to someone, to get help, but she never would. She told me that she would be fine, that things would change, that they would get better.

But they didn't.

We were eighteen. Things like that didn't make sense to me or to her, but she told me there were hours and sometimes even days missing from her life. I learned about the journals she kept from her eleventh birthday, that she still keeps, but things are worse and they're emptier than before. I write my own journals for her, for when she _can't_ write her own, for when she's not herself. When she reads them, she doesn't remember them; it's like reading a bestseller for her. She can't believe that any of it is true, that she transforms into something she didn't even think was possible for her.

Hell, I don't think anything was possible for her, at least not in the direction she's headed. I always thought she would be this smart girl that graduates college with honors and get one of the best jobs in the country. Or even the world. But things didn't work out like that. School became difficult for her, not knowing that she was staying up all night, that her body was a hundred times more tired than she was. She was becoming a loner, pulling away from people who used to be her friends, people she had known for years. She had anxiety and panic attacks at the most random times of the day, headaches that couldn't be explained.

Things become tense between her and her brother. Spencer didn't know what to do, but he didn't want to lose her. Sometimes they would fight, and it would bring out the worst in her, but she couldn't stop it. He tried to stop her, tried to calm her down, tried to end the argument. It only escalated and we were all afraid, knowing what she was capable of. She changed, like someone had flicked a switch, and became something none of us wanted to know.

There was one person we could trust to at least tell us what was happening to her. We took her to the only therapist who actually made sense, someone who was still afraid of me and wouldn't go to anyone, someone who believed in strict patient confidentiality. She finally agreed to go and he told us what she was dealing with.

She had dissociative identity disorder.

He said she could be treated, that she could be helped, and honestly I wanted to help her. We all did. But she exploded. In the blink of an eye, she became someone else and I had to physically drag her out of the office, unconcerned for my own well-being. That was when it began, or the first time I had actually seen it happen. She didn't want to be helped.

For three years I gave up my nights to try and help her, to keep her from going out and doing something that would ultimately end her. It wasn't her fault, no, and I wasn't going to let anyone say it was. She fought me every night and sometimes during the day, but I wasn't going to give up. She was my responsibility. When Spencer and Freddie could no longer be around her without setting her off, I took her to our own cabin in the middle of nowhere. If she was around people, it only magnified her aggression.

I could barely be in her presence.

But I was something different to her. I always had been, the same way she was different for me. She was my best friend, no, more than that. I could keep her safe, I could protect her, and I was the only person she didn't lash out toward, that she didn't threaten or hit. I was hers, the only thing she knew was real. She lost sight of things when the blackouts began, when she would become someone different, but even the other person knew who I was to her. I was probably the safest person in the world with her.

I knew the dangers, both to others and to her. I didn't think it would ever happen, even though I kept a close watch on her. I hardly left her alone, sometimes calling Spencer or Freddie, or even Gibby to bring us food or clothes or anything she needed. I didn't go without…but she came first. She always came first to me, and she's known that since high school, when I confessed one of the biggest secrets I had been harboring. I can't say that that's why she didn't hurt me, why she was different with me. People who have been so close to someone have turned around and killed them just because they were compelled to, because that's what the other person told them to do.

Even when Carly changed, she wasn't always violent. Sometimes it would be hard to distinguish who she was. The other person was nearly the same as the original, but there were some habits that were definitely not hers. The other person would drum her fingers on a surface when she was impatient or bored, or chew the end of her pencil when she couldn't think. Technically that person wasn't mine. Only Carly was.

That did put a strain on our relationship. Where Carly loved me, the other person didn't. The other personality wanted someone completely different, more or less someone who wasn't the same gender. I remember in high school, Carly would sometimes switch while we were together and flirt with some random boy right in front of me. Back then, I didn't understand and it almost ended our relationship twice. I tried to be open about it; maybe this wasn't real for Carly. Maybe she just thought that we're best friends, we might as well try to be more. When Carly explained everything, things became clear. I forgave her for what she'd done, how I had felt, and anything else I had blamed her for that wasn't even her fault.

But now, here we are, separated eternally because of what's happened. I never thought she would ever do it, that she would ever hurt herself, but she did. And it's my fault. I turned my back on her for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes that she had left me in the kitchen to go to the bathroom to wash her hands and face. I had gotten worried after hearing a crash, wondering if she was okay. When I had opened the bathroom door, I knew instantly that it was my fault. This was never going to be undone.

Sticking through her chest was a long shard of glass from the mirror, which she had destroyed and broken apart to do this to herself. She didn't even write a note or tell me she was going to. The other person told her to do it, to end her own life.

I had knelt in the bathroom beside her dying body for two hours before I finally called Freddie. I had known it was too late to save her. When Freddie and Spencer both came to the cabin, neither could look at her…or at me. Even though they knew I hadn't done it, they knew that I wasn't in the right mind state, that I could go off at any minute.

Every day since, I've missed her, sitting here in this cabin alone. Every single day of my life since, every painful year for fifty-three years, I have been here alone. And I know now that this is my last, that I'm going to die right here in the bathroom where she died because I need to be close to her. I _have_ to be close to her. I call Freddie and tell him and he comes to me in the middle of the night and stays with me until I close my eyes and breathe my last breath.

In the end…Carly was never alone. And neither am I.


End file.
